As Dawn Breaks
by Aubrey Black
Summary: A race against time as Mulder drives to get to Scully in hospital.


"As Dawn Breaks"  
  
In the dead of the night a car flies down the interstate. Its wheels whisper on the slow-cooling blacktop, but no one is around to hear.  
  
In the dead of the night a building slumbers, almost deserted. A clock ticks over the stupefying hum of countless computer monitors, repeating its message with deepening impact sixty times a minute to an audience of one.  
  
In the dead of the night a house hides in sleeping suburbs, trying not to show that it is awake. Behind the hastily drawn blinds a stubborn phone refuses to ring and the silence, to the woman who steadfastly waits for it, is almost deafening.   
  
In the dead of the night a hospital lies quiet, the bustle of the day muted with the onset of darkness. Alone in the intensive care unit a woman sleeps, oblivious to her surroundings which are, in turn, oblivious to her. Just another patient, just another disease. Just another life to slip quietly away. The woman slumbers on.  
  
The woman sleeps...  
  
She sleeps...  
  
* * *  
  
I put my foot to the floor and watch the needle rise above eighty. I am risking my life, or at least the bond on my rented car, driving at such break-neck speeds, but I'mbeyond caring. As I fly down the interstate, going East, going North, going cold, going *home*, my life means increasingly little to me. And should I not make it in time - hell, even if I do - there's a good chance, thinking of the loaded gun at hy hip, that I may do something desperate. It all depends.   
  
I can't believe I went away. I know that silently berating myself for my stupidity, for my *selfishness* will achievenothing, but I can't help it. I cold-heartedly abandoned the best friend I have in the world, precisely at the time she needed me the most. I cannot believe my arrogance, cannot fathom what I must have been thinking. Cannot fathom what it must have taken for her to let me go.   
  
And so I drive in silence, through the night, not daring even to turn on the radio, not trusting my emotions - not even alone. I will not allow myself the luxury of tears, I don't deserve them. And my frustration at being so far away, the gap between myself and her closing mile by mile, not fast enough. This homecoming, these realisations about myself come years too late already. I've lived the last five years with blinkers on, unable to see the bigger picture, although I was always convinced I could. It's all my fault, and on this last day, to have been across the other side of the country - what was I thinking? What in God's name was I *thinking*?  
  
And yet I let her let me go. Walked out of that hospital room a week ago, simply waved and walked away. Carried her last wistful smile with me to New Mexico and stowed it away in the back of my mind, to retrieve later, when *I* had the time. When I had finished chasing my little green men - damn! it all seems so futile now, so terribly, horribly trivial, when I think that I may never get to say goodbye. If I don't make it, that last, small smile will haunt me to my grave. I was so naive - never realised just how bad she was, only a week ago. I saw the haunted look in her eyes, the bruised shadows that emphasised the hollows in her cheeks, the sallow tinge her skin had taken, and I thought she would be fine. Never once did I stop to consider that she might not be there when I returned. This was to me, at the time, unthinkable.  
  
Well, now I am paying the price. I am paying the price for my arrogance, my stupidity, and I am paying with a vengeance. And no matter how fast I speed, I am utterly terrified that I'm going to be too late. So many years too late already...  
  
There is nothing I can do to save her now. Nothing I can do to help except for to be there, to hold her hand, to ease her through these last dark hours. Funny, how I've come to accept the inevitable so easily at last. I remember the day she first told me about the cancer, showed me the X-rays - her substantiated, undeniable scientific evidence - and she told me it was terminal. Inoperable. Such cold, clinical words applied to such a vivacious, warm person, full of so much life and vigor. I refused to believe them. I told her that I couldn't accept it, that I *wouldn't* accept it, and that there was a way if only we could seek it out. She simply looked at me and restated her case. So like her, to calmly shoot me down when I was wrong, taking the wind out of my sails. Saving me from myself.   
  
And as I think about this, I realise that more than anything, that is the truth. Scully is indeed my savior. She came into my life at a crossroads, a vital turning point, and she steered me the right way. She kept me near enough to the straight-and-narrow - maybe I wasn't always *on* the right track, but I could certainly always see it. Thanks to her. There is no doubt in my mind, *no* doubt, that I owe her my life. My sanity, and my life. Everything.  
  
Me, who owes her everything. She who owes me nothing, and yet is suffering because of me. Its all because of me. They did this to her, but ultimately, it is my fault. I will take the responisbility for this, and I will shoulder the blame. And I will live with the guilt for the rest of my life. That will be my punishment for my selfishness.   
  
But I need to get back tonight. I need to be with her in these last hours, and I need to ask... I need to ask her forgivness. And I need her to know that she will never be forgotten. That in her painfully short life, she has acomplished more than most women twice her age. And that she has been loved for it. She knows all this, of course. But I need to tell her all the same.   
  
And so, as dawn threatens to break right in front of me I point my car straight at it, I put my foot to the floor again and listen to the wind whip by outside, right past my head. And I pray - if God has done nothing else for me my whole, wretched life, that he will do this one thing. That he will let me get to her in time...   
  
* * *  
  
As dawn breaks in the building back east, the sun filters through the windows, creeps over the floor, steals into the smallest crannies to wipe away the last traces of night. The clock keeps its vigil alongside the man at the desk. Under the framed pictures of nameless, unimportant men and women the man slowly removes his wire-framed glasses and buries his face in his hands, the sunlight creeping up to touch his face. The clock ticks on, no longer counting down, but counting up.  
  
As dawn breaks and the other houses in the street begin to wake, the hush behind the hastily drawn curtains is broken. The middle-aged occupant of the house sits up with a start from where she has fallen asleep with her head on the table, and grabs at the telephone, glancing at the clock. Surely she didn't sleep all night? As she stares out the one small, high window left uncovered in her haste to close up the previous night, she is suddenly blinded as the brilliant amber light of the early morning sun shines through. The silence is shattered as the reciever clatters hollowly to the floor.   
  
As dawn breaks, the rented car careers around a corner and slides onto a residential street. Hard fingers of light reflect off the dashboard, stabbing at his eyes, dazzling and blinding him, causing him to slow. As he drives his speed drops, from eighty down to fifty, to a crawl, painfully slow in comparison to the speeds he has been travelling at all night. Finally he stops. Wearily opening the door, he gets out of the car, stock still in the middle of the road. Taking a few steps forward, he looks up at the sky, briefly, accusingly, and then falls to his knees on the blacktop. Any casual onlooker would swear he was crying.  
  
As dawn breaks on the fifth floor of the hospital people are starting to wake. The noises of everyday life start up again, rythms and patterns which have gone on for years unbroken. But in the intensive care unit there is no sound but the myriad machines which monitor the woman's status. The room is cool, dark, there is no movement, there hasn't been for three days. She is still pale, still unconsious, still alone. One of the machines cries a high-pitched wail. It is a sad, lonely sound, a lament. And it continues as the first thin slivers of sunlight appear through the blinds, inching their way towards the figure in the bed, reaching out, touching her red hair, making it glow like auburn fire. Claiming her. Releasing her...  
  
The sound continues as sneakered feet hurry down the hall. And soon, all too soon, to the lonely room on the fifth floor, the silence descends again... 


End file.
